One of Canada’s largest screen actors unions is accusing Budweiser of “exploiting every-day folks” by shooting a documentary-style Super Bowl ad featuring a crowd of non-unionized labour.

Broadcast on Canadian stations during the Super Bowl 10 days ago, the two-minute commercial centres on a real-life stunt pulled last December on two unsuspecting Ontario beer league hockey teams. Just as the Toronto Generals and Les Amigos are halfway through the second period, banners unfurl, a jumbotron is unveiled and the players gawk as 500 screaming, face-painted fans stream into Mississauga’s Port Credit Arena. Seven million Canadians saw the ad on Super Bowl Sunday, and it has racked up 3.5 million views on YouTube.

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The Toronto branch of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) asserts that the members of the crowd, as well as the “unsuspecting hockey players” should have been paid union-negotiated wages.

“It’s an embarrassing day for Labatt [Budweiser’s parent company] when they’re caught exploiting every-day folks in their multi-million-dollar television ads,” Heather Allin, president of ACTRA Toronto, said in a Feb. 10 statement.

“The ideal way to shoot this commercial would have been to fairly compensate the people whose voices are being branded and attached to this particular beer,” she told the Post on Tuesday.

The teams’ players are owed at least $3,215.15 each, with an extra $537.85 given to players who appeared in short follow-up interviews, according to the union. ACTRA also noted that had the union been notified, the players would “have had the protection of a qualified professional stunt co-ordinator.”

In a release, Labatt claimed that striking a union agreement ahead of time would have eliminated the surprise. “As anyone who has seen Budweiser’s ‘Flash Fans’ commercial will know, it is much more the filming of a spontaneous event rather than a traditional, scripted television advertisement,” said the brewer.

Crowd members, who were recruited from across Southern Ontario, were paid $150 minus a 15% modelling fee (casting calls noted it was a “NON-UNION job”). Under a union contract, members of the crowd likely would have received a cash rate of $11 per hour — although prominent crowd members may have qualified for a “principal performer” fee of $3,753.

So far, ACTRA is the only group to have raised any opposition to the ad, which was produced by New York-based marketing firm Anomaly. The players were not paid, but they were invited to an exclusive party thrown on Super Bowl Sunday — and readily boasted to local media about the spot. “All those emotions you see on the ice are true emotions,” Toronto Generals player Tony Primerano told a City TV interviewer in early February.

“Everyone who participated in the filming enjoyed it and readily agreed to be part of the final product,” wrote Labatt in the release.

In 2010, juice-maker Tropicana travelled to Inuvik, N.W.T., and lit up the 24-hour darkness with a massive “artificial sun” made from an illuminated helium balloon. The smiling elders and children in the ad did not receive union-approved wages, but Tropicana contributed to local daycare centres and food programs, as well as providing every household with a carton of orange juice.

“I don’t think anybody has a problem with paying an actor a union rate if that actor is doing his craft and providing value to the spot,” said Chris Hall, president of Toronto-based ad agency HQvB, adding that there is a big difference between a skilled professional actor and an amateur brought in to fill an arena seat.

“You see a lot of three-actor commercials in Canada, because putting together a crowd is cost-prohibitive,” he said.